The tall, quiet Chief Magistrate was equal to the occasion. Great Britain had ordered her navy on a war footing, dispatched eight thousand troops to Canada to strike by land as well as sea, allowing us but seven days in which to comply with all her demands or hand Lord Lyons his passports.
The President immediately dictated a reply which forced her Prime Minister to accept it and achieved for the Nation the establishment of a principle for which we had fought in vain in 1812.
He ordered the prisoners returned and an apology expressed. His apology was a two-edged sword thrust which Great Britain was compelled to take with a groan.
"In 1812," the President said, "the United States fought because you claimed the right to stop our vessels on the high seas, search them and take by force British subjects found thereon. Our country in making this surrender, adheres to the ancient principle for which we contended and we are glad to find that Her Majesty's Government in demanding this surrender thereby renounces an error and accepts our position."
Lord Palmerston made a wry face, but was compelled to accept the surrender, and with it seal his own humiliation as a beaten diplomat. War with England at this moment would have meant unparalleled disaster. France had ambitions in Mexico and she was bound in friendship to England. The two great Nations of Europe would have been hurled against our divided country with the immediate recognition of the Confederacy.
The President forced this return of the prisoners and apparent surrender to Great Britain in the face of the blindest and most furious outbursts of popular rage.
Gilbert Winter rose in the Senate and in thunderous oratory voiced the well-nigh unanimous feeling of the millions of the North of all parties and factions:
"I warn the administration against this dastardly and cowardly surrender to a foreign foe! The voice of the people demand that we stand firm on our dignity as a Sovereign Nation. If the President and his Cabinet refuse to listen they will find themselves engulfed in a fire that will consume them like stubble. They will find themselves helpless before a power that will hurl them from their places!"
The President was still under the cloud of public wrath over this affair when the crisis of the problem of emancipation became acute. The gradual growth of the number of his bitter foes in Washington he had seen with deep distress. And yet it was inevitable. No man in his position could administer the great office whose power he was wielding without fear or favor and not make enemies. And now both friend and foe were closing in on him with a well-nigh resistless demand for emancipation.